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Alaska Cruise July 2004

Using JASON
II on a cruise in July, 2004, we mapped and
sampled the seafloor in an area of the Aleutian margin.
Movement of seafloor sediments in the area were thought
by some to be the cause of the 1946 tsunami that caused
appreciable damage in Alaska and Hawaii. Our
mapping efforts revealed no geological features
indicative of the slide predicted by some Tsunami
modelers, making the 1946 tsunami even more mysterious.
We discovered new deep-sea coral habitats methane seeps,
and sampled the mosaic of environments in this
unexplored region. In collaboration with Jon
Martin (Univ. of Florida), we will examine the Sr and
stable isotope signatures of modern and fossil
foraminifera collected on the cruise. We hope to
understand the factors, including disturbance, which
generate seafloor ecosystem mosaic in the submarine
canyon systems. These data will also help further
calibrate faunal and geochemical proxy information from
benthic foraminifera.
This project was funded by NOAA's National Undersea
Research Program through the West Coast and Polar
Regions Undersea Research Center at the University of
Alaska Fairbanks (NOAA-NURC). Support for ISU student
travel was also provided by an ISU experiential learning
grant from the Experiential Learning Committee,and the
Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic
Affairs. This project is a collaborative,
interdisciplinary effort with a number of researchers,
including Lisa Levin, Joris Gieskes and Mike Tryon from
Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Jon Martin from the
University of Florida; Wiebke Ziebis from the University
of Southern California; and Gerard Fryer of the
University of Hawaii.